Churchill: “Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are haggling about the price.”

As illustrations of sexual double standards go, it’s a pretty unpleasant one. Nonetheless, I’ve started to wonder whether Churchill had a point. If sex has already been established as a means of exchange, why shouldn’t the buyer try to get the best deal he can?

Only if this is the case, why is paying for sex not viewed with the same horror? It’s the same marketplace, the same bodies, the same needs. All sex for rent does is cut out the symbolic means of exchange in the middle. Yet far from decrying the exchange of sex for money, right now supposedly progressive organisations such as Amnesty International and the NUS, in addition to mainstream political parties such as the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, are pushing to liberalise attitudes towards the purchase of sex. Why are these two things seen so differently?